CHAPTER VI.

OF THE NAMES OF SUBSTANCES.


1. The common Names of Substances stand for Sorts.

The common names of substances, as well as other general terms, stand
for SORTS: which is nothing else but the being made signs of such
complex ideas wherein several particular substances do or might agree,
by virtue of which they are capable of being comprehended in one common
conception, and signified by one name. I say do or might agree: for
though there be but one sun existing in the world, yet the idea of it
being abstracted, so that more substances (if there were several) might
each agree in it, it is as much a sort as if there were as many suns as
there are stars. They want not their reasons who think there are, and
that each fixed star would answer the idea the name sun stands for, to
one who was placed in a due distance: which, by the way, may show us how
much the sorts, or, if you please, GENERA and SPECIES of things (for
those Latin terms signify to me no more than the English word sort)
depend on such collections of ideas as men have made, and not on the
real nature of things; since it is not impossible but that, in propriety
of speech, that might be a sun to one which is a star to another.


2. The Essence of each Sort of substance is our abstract Idea to which
the name is annexed.